Bloomberg PPC Ltd., South Africa’s largest publicly traded cement maker, said it received 4 billion rand (US$263 million) of bank guarantees to underwrite the sale of shares to existing investors, adding to facilities it received last week to redeem bonds. A group of lenders including Standard Bank Group Ltd, Nedbank Group Ltd, FirstRand Ltd’s Rand Merchant Bank and Barclays ...

  Bloomberg China weakened its currency fixing by the most since last August as global market turmoil spurred by Britain’s vote to leave the European Union sent the dollar surging. The People’s Bank of China set the reference rate 0.9 percent weaker at 6.6375 a dollar. A gauge of the greenback’s strength jumped 2.4 percent in the past two days, ...

  Bloomberg India’s economy will be among the least impacted in Asia by the UK’s vote to exit the European Union given its relatively low exposure to trade, according to Morgan Stanley. “Increased uncertainty in the external environment due to UK’s vote should add to downward pressures on growth and inflation in the region,” Morgan Stanley economists including Chetan Ahya ...

  Al-Qaa / AFP A string of suicide bombings early on Monday killed at least five people in a Lebanese village near the volatile border with war-ravaged Syria. The attack came just hours after the IS group on Sunday claimed responsibility for a suicide bomb that killed seven soldiers on Jordan’s border with Syria. Monday’s deadly blasts struck Al-Qaa, a predominantly ...

  AMMAN / AP The extremist IS group claimed responsibility for last week’s deadly suicide attack on a Jordanian army post on the Syrian border, posting a video online on Monday it said shows the car bomb blast. The video, which was posted on the Facebook page of the IS news agency Amaq, shows a vehicle kicking up dust as it ...

  ISLAMABAD / AP A former Afghan warlord has announced that a much-touted peace deal between his militant group and the Kabul government is effectively “dead.” The comments by Gulbuddin Hekmatyar came after his Hezb-i-Islami effectively scuttled the deal, drafted weeks ago, with new demands. Hekmatyar offered a lengthy diatribe against Kabul in the Daily Shahadat magazine belonging to his ...

  NEW DELHI / AP India on Monday joined an exclusive club of countries controlling exports in missile technology, just a day after bemoaning its exclusion from another elite group that governs international nuclear fuel and technology. Foreign Secretary S Jaishankar signed onto the Missile Technology Control Regime aimed at preventing the unchecked proliferation of missiles and their delivery systems. ...

  Port Harcourt/ AFP Five foreign construction workers kidnapped last week with two Nigerian colleagues after their vehicle was attacked and driver killed have been released, officials said on Monday, with two suffering serious injuries. The commissioner of police in Cross River state, Jimoh Ozi-Obeh, said that the men, including three Australians, a New Zealander and a South African, had ...

  BEIJING / AP China’s premier called on Monday for joint efforts to restore global economic confidence following the shock of Britain’s vote to leave the European Union. Last week’s referendum “has had an obvious impact on international financial markets. We are seeing increasing uncertainties in the world economy,” said Li Keqiang, speaking at the World Economic Forum in the ...

  Dubai / Emirates Business Dubai Culture and Arts Authority (Dubai Culture), the Emirate’s dedicated entity for heritage, arts and culture, has been announced as the winner of the Government Green IT Initiative of the Year 2016 at the .Gov Dubai & Northern Emirates Awards Ceremony. The prize recognises the Information Technology Department at Dubai Culture, for their ongoing work ...